♪~Can music save your mortal soul?♪

Take Three

Take ThreeAuthor: Sentra04Fandom: SupernaturalRating:RCharacters: Crowley, Castiel, Edgar, Dick, Meg, Sam, Dean, and some others?Pairing: Gen?Warning: Slight spoilers for season 7. If you dun know who the boss of the big bad is - or you' never watched dean eat/make love to a turducken - then dun read?Disclaimer and Notes: I like this idea - i just can't write it to where i'm satisfied. Seriously.. this is like.. the third time? Posting at least. Got a few dozen in my notebook. I just need more black-eyed Dean. The array that is in here is one i designed for a completly different story... that is just like this, but never typed.

there's blood everywhere.

This itself isn't surprising. With his life - blood doesn't startle Sam anymore.

What startles Sam is the complicated design it's been painted out with. Wide circle, hitting every corner of the room. Octagon painted inside it, star pointed. More circles. More stars. More prefect geometric shapes. Not painted with the swipe of fingers - but thickly lines out.

Like the door to Lucifer had been with Lillith's blood. Meg's current vessel stares across the room at him. She looks terrified, and it makes Sam's stomach twist something awful. Her arms have been slashed open, blood dripping and spilling down the paths of the giant array at Sam's feet. She's trapped inside a small devil trap - one of four. Crowley's stopped just short of the one immediately to his left. Sam's toeing the one in front of him. It wouldn't hold him - but it's still to much of an unknown.

The Leviathan named Edgar is in the circle to his right. Sam wonder's if he's really trapped, or just stunned motionless. Dick and Dean are still standing in the middle. Dick has the upper hand. Dean looks a few heartbeats from passing out from lack of air.

Crowley's turned to Meg. "Where did you dig this up?" He stage whispers, "And to what point?"

"What does it do?" Sam asks. Edgar isn't moving, but he's watching. Dick just grins, holding tight though another attempt by Dean to throw him off. Somehow - their suffling isn't scuffing the wet blood under their feet. Though - now Sam can see where Dean's blood is feeding the array.

Dean screams then - otherworld and high pitched - Sam's head aches as it bounces across the smooth stone walls. The gaping whole in his shoulder gushes blood, red and thick - with... a blue faint glow....

It hits the lines of the first star - fills it completely - before the light flashes, words glowing out along the floor, burning like fire to where they four of them stand, before racing out along the outer rim. It's Latin - he thinks. They way it dances off the ground, flickering hot blue flames - makes it hard to read.

Edgar screams them - pained and he feels like someone took a crowbar to his head (again). Meg and Crowley show similar signs of pain.

"What the..." Dick seems unaffected, and Sam agrees with his confusion. But then Dean stands up, skin on his shoulder knitting itself back together.

"I outta bite you back for that one." It's Dean talking - but his voice isn't right. It doesn't have the hard rage that is Dean. Instead - he sounds amused. "I was bit by Eve once. What do you think? I wonder if her toxin's still flouting around. What would Eve's bite do to you, I wonder?"

Dick steps back then, looking unsettled. His face is back to human, and he's trailing his finger's down his jaw, pulling back to study the blood. "What are you?"

That's what Sam is thinking, as the other three collapse. It's just him, Dick and the something that is his brother. "Dean?"

"Hi Sam" he says, turning to smirk at him. Light escapes from his lips - nothing like with the angels, just a light pale blue puff of air. But his eyes.

They're black.

Sam's sprouting off an exorcism before he even thinks about it. Dean just shakes his head. "Sam. Not now. Let it go."

"Get out of my brother."

Dean just smiles, turning back to Dick - who's looking for an exit. "After him, Sam. Just let me do this.

Dean moves, dragging the bodies in a line. "No body home in any of them. Maybe for the best. With them shifting bodies like that.. who knows what these guys really looked like. Unfortunate that their families will never know..."

It's not Dean, but whatever it is, doesn't seem intent on hurting him. The array follows him around the room, a sight that runs shivers down his spine.

Lucifer has run off from his mind. Sam doesn't know what to do with that one.

"You should start talking now."

Dean looks up from where he's kneeling by Edgar's meatsuit. Eyes still black - blue misting around him. "Sam."

"What are you?"

"It's.... complicated."

"I'm pretty smart."

"We... We are... and it's... even a bit confusing to us."

Sam crosses the room, squatting down to be level with them wearing his brother.

"Some of us are Dean. Actually - most of us are Dean. Child Dean. Teenager Dean. Young Adult. Adult. In Hell. Post Hell."

Sam swallows, uncertain. "Post Lisa. Post Cas. The one who cried under Alistar's blade. And the one who gleefully took it up. Most of us, We are Dean. We are your brother."

"And the one's that aren't?"

"Some of us are Boris, and our Alpha. And Nick. And Eve. Little bits of us who are embedded in this flesh. We're all here."

Sam's unsure now, trying to pull up faces for the names, but only Eve sounds familiar. "There's more, though.."

"Yes."

"How many more?"

"Two. Just two."

There's hesitation to talk to him now. Walls are coming up. "You're not here to hurt my brother..."

"No! No! for all the reasons we're here - hurting ....Dean is not one." Those dark eyes flash - a hint of green shining though. "Maybe reiterating a claim, but not to hurt. "

"Then.. the last two?" The black and green are completely gone now. It's bright white. "What?!"

"Hello Sam."

"Last two?"

"Filtered. At least - I am. The last one.. He's.... shy, but the only way i can be here."

"And you?"

"The one who hold back the Leviathan until Judgment day. But without consent, I cannot walk this plane of existence."

"An angel. You're an angel."

Dean's eyebrow's wag. "I believe it's 'Yatzhee,' yes? But I'm not compatible with Dean. So I had to be filtered. There where some.. strange side effects. The 'array' was my summoning point. Meg... she's smart for such a twisted thing. She helped us design it."

"So that talk of balance?"

"Complete crap. Just needed to have all the pieces is place."

Sam snorts, running a hand though his hair.

"Sam?"

He looks up - it's hard to look at Dean like this. It makes his heart ache. "Yeah?"

"My brother. Is he still bothering you?"

Sam glances around the room, "Not right now."

"He comes back - you tell Dean immediately. I'll be in touch - if somewhat removed."

"What -what?"

There's a shift again, Dean sinking down until he's sitting on the ground. His eyes still glow. His body slumps.

"You're the last one. There inside Dean..." It's not a question exactly. Though the who are you still lingers in the air.

He's intend on looking down, where Dean's fingers are folded together against his leg. He nods.

"The last angel - he said you were the only way he could pull this off..." Sam prompted.

"My sister is very powerful." His voice is ragged and rough. "Her voice would of killed Dean. She couldn't ask for his permission. So she asked me. I consented. It was the worst twisting of permission.. Worse than Lucifer and Michael."

"what.. what are you, then?"

"I don't know anymore, Sam. I'm..." He looked up then, and Sam's heart froze, "I'm not even certain I exist..."

"...C... Cas?"

Looking away was all the confirmation he needed; Sam lurched forward and hugged the lost angel. "Oh God Cas - where have you been? We thought.. We thought that you..."

"I think I may still be." He muttered into Sam's arm, awkwardly petting the long limbs.

"I am part of the Angel Castiel. But I am not him. I am just a small fragment grace, trapped in Dean's body when it was rebuilt.."

Sam fingered the hole in Dean's jackets, the bare skin of Dean's left shoulder. Very faintly - faded and healing like it never had before - the outline of the burned hand print shown under the fabric - the skin un-marred by the leviathan's bite. But the new skin - showed no trace of the proof Dean had of Castiel's hand in his resurrection.

"What does this..."

"My sister has already returned to her station in purgatory. To return your brother to himself - i have just enough of myself to do this."

"What will happen to you?"

"Angels were never meant to die. We have no heaven or hell awaiting us. We have no judgment to take comfort in. I don't know."

"Can't you stay - It'll kill Dean to loose you again..."

"It will kill Dean to allow me to stay. Allow me this Sam. Allow me to set things right. Let me thank Dean - and you - for taking on my mistakes. For correcting my transgressions."

"But Dean... He misses you, so much..."

He only smiles. "I have to put him right. I have to put him back together, Sam. It's what i was created for. You're the one who has to make sure he stays that way."

8 * 8 * 8 * 8

"Sammy?"

There's a familour rumble under him - the growl and hum of home that he's been without for months. His head aches, his body aches, but he diesn't feel tired.

The vibrating and bounching under him slows - a million times better than all the world's magic fingers - and he hears a door open.